I grinned. “You might be surprised.”
Josh chuckled and reached out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear.
I closed my eyes and leaned into his hand. “I’ve been wondering something. Maybe you can fill me in while we wait.”
“I can try.”
I opened my eyes. “How did this all happen?”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
I gestured between us. “You and me. Did Tyler tell you he broke things off, and you decided to make your first creepy move?”
He grinned and pulled his hand away. “Tyler showed me the text you sent him.”
I gaped at him. “No, he didn’t.”
Josh nodded.
“And he didn’t recognize your tattoos in it?”
“No. You might have noticed, but my roommate is more than a little self-involved.”
I leaned back, remembering how grateful Tyler had looked to have some of Josh’s focus on me now, and it made me wonder. What if Tyler had known about Josh’s masktok account all along, and when I sent him that text, he decided to play matchmaker?
“What is it?” Josh asked. “You’ve got the same squirrelly look on your face that Fred had when he stole that piece of bacon.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said. Tyler was probably too full of himself for something so diabolical. “So what happened after he showed you the text?”
Now it was Josh’s turn to look squirrelly. “I, uh, might have spent several hours looking for you in my comments and reading everything you’d ever written.” He turned away from me, rubbing the back of his neck. “And then I decided to see if you were all talk or if you were really as into the mask thing as I am.”
“Who would have thought that a few weeks later, you’d get yourself a girlfriend out of it,” I said.
Josh turned back to me, his gaze steady on mine. “The first night I watched you at the hospital, I knew I wanted this to be more than the kinky hookup I’d planned.”
My insides went all mushy at the confession. “And there I’d been, ready to shoot you. You must have been shitting yourself when you watched me clear the house after you broke in.”
He sent me a wink. “Yeah, but they say you can tell a lot about a woman by the way she handles a gun, and I was more than –”
A loud yowl echoed through the car.
Josh and I shared a panicked look.
I unlatched my seatbelt. “Finish that sentence later. Peepants McGee sounds desperate.”
I climbed out and grabbed Fred’s carrier, careful not to jostle him too much as I dashed for my front door. There was a second litter box in my laundry room, and as soon as I got Fred’s carrier unzipped, he beelined toward it.
I followed after him into the house, wary. It smelled like bleach and the fabricated scent of pine. My hardwood floors shone like they’d been freshly polished.
How much had my cousin’s crew cleaned? Brad was mainly on the kitchen floor and then briefly carted through the living room, but he’d already been in my snowboard bag by then. From how my house sparkled, it looked like every surface had been wiped down. Out of an abundance of caution? If so, I wasn’t about to complain. It would save me from having to clean for a while.
Josh stepped inside behind me, carrying our bags and the litter box. I turned to help him, wondering where my guest was.
Josh leaned toward me and dropped his voice. “The hood was still hot. I’ll need to sweep our things and my car for a tracker later.”
Son of a bitch. What was it with all these stalkers lately? Was it me? Was I giving off some weird, come-at-me pheromone? Or was Mercury in retrograde again?
We left our things by the front door and went to find my latest home invader. Sure enough, my cousin, Junior, sat at my kitchen table, sipping coffee from a paper to-go cup. He was the spitting image of his father, short and trim with bold facial features that were more striking than handsome.
His gaze shifted from me to Josh, and he arched a dark brow. “I see you shaved and lost the glasses.”
Behind me, Josh swore.
I stepped between the men, putting Josh at my back. “What are you doing here?”
I liked it when Josh invaded my space and pushed my boundaries, but it turned out he was the exception to the rule. Anyone else doing it made me grumpy, bordering on homicidal – family included.
Junior stood, spreading his arms. “Is that any way to greet your oldest cousin?”
I eyed him, making no move to accept his offered embrace. “That depends. Did you or did you not point a gun at my boyfriend yesterday?”
He dropped his arms and had the decency to look sheepish. “It was a misunderstanding.”
“Your face is about to have a misunderstanding with my fist,” I said, stalking forward.
Or at least I tried to. I made it one step before a yank on my jacket had me crashing backward into Josh’s chest. He wrapped his arms around me like he was hugging me, but I could tell from the way his muscles tensed that this was less about affection and more about restraint.
“Let me go,” I said.
“I could, but then what kind of example would I be setting for our son if I let you beat up a family member in front of him?”
I glanced past Junior and saw Fred padding out of the laundry room toward us. “That you shouldn’t take shit from anyone, not even relatives.”
Junior frowned, looking around the room. “Your son? I didn’t know you – ” He caught sight of Fred in his periphery and turned to stare at him. His confusion deepened as he looked back at us, jerking a thumb toward Fred. “You talking about the cat?”
“Yes,” Josh said. The “duh” was silent but heavily implied.
Junior grimaced. “Cat people are so fucking weird.”
Josh’s arms stiffened.
I sighed. “What do you want, Junior?”
“We need your boyfriend.”
“For what?”
“For the same thing as before,” Junior said. “To hack Brad’s computer.”
Josh made a low noise of contemplation. “Isn’t it a bit risky to return to the house so soon after the cops were there?”
Junior nodded. “Yeah, which is why we’re not going. We got another team for stealthy shit. They’ll sneak in tonight, and you can hack it remotely.” He raised his brows at Josh. “Right?”
“It’s not that simple,” Josh said. “Is Brad’s computer password locked? How secure is his network? What kind of software does he use?”
Junior shrugged. “How the fuck should I know?”
Josh’s arms eased around me. “They’re rhetorical questions, but depending on the answers, it could slow the work and require different tools to get the job done. It’ll be faster if I’m there.”
I stiffened. “I don’t like that option.”
My cousin looked troubled as he glanced past me to Josh. “Me neither.”
Josh huffed out an unamused laugh. “Trust me when I say this isn’t how I wanted my night to go.” His arms tightened again, pulling me into him so he could press a kiss to the top of my head.
I closed my eyes and leaned back, wishing we were alone, wishing this bullshit was over so Josh and I could get on with our lives. And maybe I should have felt guilty about that or selfish – a man was dead, and all I cared about was what an inconvenience it was – but I couldn’t bring myself to drum up anything more than a mild concern that this could blow up in our faces. What better way to ensure that didn’t happen than having a world-class hacker cover our tracks?
I let out a deep breath and opened my eyes. “Josh is right. He needs to be there, and I’m going with him.”